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Ebola Spreads to Sierra Leone Capital of Freetown as Deaths Rise

July 12 (Bloomberg) -- The worst outbreak of Ebola moved to
Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown where an Egyptian was found
with the city’s first confirmed case of the disease.

The unidentified Egyptian national had traveled from
Kenema, the largest city in the nation’s Eastern Province, and
checked into a clinic east of Freetown, Sidie Yahya Tunis,
director of Information, Communication and Technology at the
Ministry of Health and Sanitation, said by phone today. The
person was moved back to the Ebola center in Kenema, he said.

“The Ebola disease usually spreads to other places when
suspected or confirmed cases in one community move to another,
they abandon treatment centers to stay with relatives or they
seek treatment outside the Ebola centers,” Tunis said.

There have been 99 Ebola deaths in Sierra Leone out of 315
laboratory-confirmed cases, the ministry said in an e-mailed
statement today. The ministry said yesterday that 92 people had
died out of 305 cases. Cases of the hemorrhagic fever have
killed more than 540 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia
in an outbreak that according to the World Health Organization
may last another three to four months.

The toll is greater than the 280 people killed in 1976,
when the virus was first identified near the Ebola River in what
is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The rapid spread of the
virus is largely due to people moving across borders as well as
cultural practices that are contrary to public health
guidelines, such as people touching the body of a deceased
relative before the funeral.